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As a new week begins and the frivolity of the weekend draws to a close, it is normal to look back at the week before and think: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and say huzzah”. It’s certainly how I prepare for the horrors of every Monday, and I suggest everyone do the same. But I’m no doctor and that’s no prescription for joy. Instead, perhaps take a look through the best of Wot We Wrote last week. It’s stirring stuff.

We cast our eyes over quite a few games last week. First of all though, there was yet more to be written about the rather sensational Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Kieron had this to say: “The new Deus Ex is about many things, but ranking high amongst them is DRM. I’m not even joking.” The article contains many a spoiler, so be warned, but if you’ve finished the game in the last few days, now’s the time to go back and give this a read.

Wot We Thought

Turning to new and newish releases, there was good, bad and ugly. Sometimes all in one game. Mr Cobbett stretched his mind around time travel RTS Achron. The most surprising thing is that the core mechanic, mad as it is, works. The second most surprising thing is that it’s not enough to make the game quite as amazing as we’d hoped.

Next up for a full brain and body scan was The Baconing, latest in the Deathspank series. It’s more of the same but if you’re have a sizable funny bone that may not be a bad thing.

Back on our grim little planet, John went holidaying on Dead Island and brought back some impressions. Short version? Lush vegetation and fountains of gore. “This is Borderlands meets that game YOU love that everyone else feels falls short.”

There were more tropical shenanigans to be had in the surprisingly benign dictatorship of Tropico 4. Turns out, you pretty much can please all the people all the time. But that’s not to say you can’t have fun while you’re doing it. Rob Zacny reports.

Back in the land of man- and bizzarobeast-shooting, Serious Sam: Double D’s gunstacking and anarchic sensibilities fell under the microscope and, despite all the madness, felt like little more than an appetiser for the main course. Or perhaps a shot of tequila.

There was also abundant trigger-squeezing in PC-exclusive FPS Hard Reset, which aimed to recreate the mentality of a 90s shooter. It’s fair to say that it isn’t entirely successful.

Then there’s Rock of Ages. Where do you go after Zeno Clash? On a rock-rolling trip through art history, obviously. The Pythonesque graphics won over hearts and minds as soon as they were shown but how does the thing actually play? Behold the answer.

Previews, Interviews and Regulars

Seer-like, our gaze also met the future. It will include plot-heavy Kalypso’s Galactica-like Legends of Pegasus, “a 4X space sim with a unique touch”. That’s due early 2012 but before that, and playable in beta now, is Red Orchestra 2. While a more glossy affair than the original, Jim was quick to reassure that “the horror remains. And it is brilliant.”

As well as writing down all the words that tumble out of our brains, we also catch the words that tumble out of other peoples’ brains and then we write those down as well. It’s a form of reportage known as an interview. Last week we spoke to Matt Higby, creative director of Planetside 2 and learnt that he is a griefer. We didn’t learn anything more about payment models but we did learn almost everything else.

In cardboard children, Rob covered King of Tokyo. A quick-to-play game that looks like a board version of Rampage. Sold. Mod of the Week was Civilisation: NiGHTS, which is an extension and improvement of the core gameplay rather than a strategy version of Sega’s loopy dreamworld. Civ V disappointed lots of people and while this won’t appease them all, it certainly makes aspects of the game much more rewarding.

35 Comments

As a regular reader I find this new feature completely redundant. Besides, by the time I’ve read this article about your articles I easily could have read 2 original ones. So really, what’s the point? It’s more like a convoluted “read our finest words”.

While I could simply skip this weekly round-up, I’d much prefer reading a weekly feature that also benefits the regular readers…

It’s good if you’ve been away for the week and don’t want to trawl through ten-or-so pages of “here’s a trailer for a game” or “here’s an announcement that an announcement will be announced soon” just to find the beefy features.

@strange_headache – I’m assuming it is for people who do not have the spare time to keep up with every article that appears on RPS. They can use this as a weekly summary and go back over articles which caught their eye.

I doubt I will do more than skim read it, but then again I’m an RPS addict. However I’m sure others without my crack-like dependency will find it useful.

I’m glad this is back (I feel like you guys used to have this, right?), as while I do have rps on RSS, I sometimes skip articles that I didn’t think would be of interest to me, and its nice to see if I was correct with a nifty little summary.

You know what i’d like to see ? A list feature. Just a simple vertical list of every game that got its own blog post on RPS. Dont even bother to make it a linkable list, just all text. You do know how to shine the spotlight on the obscure titles, but scrolling back the blog 10 posts at a time, in search of something interesting to play, is rather…inefficient.

After reading that first sentience, I couldn’t resist. I apologise in advance.

I met a traveller from an online land
Who said: “A vast and wordy piles of games
Stands in the network. Near it, in the pipes,
Half sunk, a shattered DRM lies, whose frown,
And always-on and keys of cold contempt,
Tell that its publisher well those deceptions wrote
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that scammed them and the sales that fed.

And in the alt-text these words appear –
`My name is RPS, King of Games:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and say huzzah!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the sprawl
Of that colossal site, boundless and bare,
The empty, memic pipes stretch far away”.

Arg! Please just post a list! I hate to think you of guys wasting your time writing these little summaries – just link them with the number of comments, a little score of how angry the comments thread got, the name of the person who won the comments thread and the person who lost it too. And how many hits the post got – probably not as an actual number, but as a colour between yellow and red.